"The Packers put on a state fair exhibition of football entertainment yesterday afternoon at Fair Park and when it was all over they’d had a very enjoyable afternoon in choking off the Detroit Lions’ winning streak. The Packers scored 41 points in the second period, including 29 by the shufflin’ man from Alabam’, Don Hutson, who really put on a show, aided and abetted by his passing mates, Irv Comp and Roy McKay." — Stoney McGlynn, Milwaukee Sentinel, Oct. 8, 1945

Don Hutson, in his 11th year as a Green Bay Packer receiver, saved the greatest individual performance of his career for the final season.

The 32-year-old end’s 29 points in the second quarter still stand as a National Football League record, more than 60 years after his remarkable exhibition at State Fair Park stadium in Milwaukee.

The date was October 7, 1945. Harry S. Truman was president, the United States was celebrating the end of World War II, and approximately 25,000 Wisconsin football fans watched the Green Bay Packers play the Detroit Lions on a gusty fall Sunday afternoon.

Those fans, and one enterprising 21-year-old newspaper reporter, witnessed a performance for the ages. Hutson, in the final season of his storied career, caught four touchdown passes and kicked five extra points — all in the second quarter.

One man. 29 points. Fifteen minutes. The Packers’ six touchdowns in the quarter were scored in just nine plays, an average of one touchdown every 2.5 minutes. The Hutson-led Packers scored 41 unanswered points with a strong wind at their backs, an NFL record that has been equaled but never broken.

"It was a remarkable day," said Packer historian Lee Remmel, then a cub reporter for the Green Bay Press-Gazette who had lobbied his editor to travel to the game at his own expense and write a sidebar story. "I was just lucky to be there in the stands on my first sports assignment. I was privileged to witness one of the great performances in team history, in pro football history."

The game was scoreless after the first quarter, but Detroit controlled the opening period and took a 7-0 lead early in the second quarter. Then Green Bay’s 41-point barrage — described as an "aerial scoring orgy" in an Associated Press story the next day — began.

It started with a 59-yard touchdown pass from halfback Roy "Tex" McKay to Hutson, coming one play after the Lions’ kickoff, to tie the game, 7-7. (In that era, the halfback did most of the passing and the quarterback was primarily a blocking back.)

After the Green Bay defense held the Lions, Irv Comp hurled a 46-yard touchdown pass to rookie Clyde Goodnight for a 14-7 lead.

Following a stalled Detroit drive and ensuing punt, Hutson snared a 46-yard scoring reception from McKay on the next play for a 21-7 Packers’ advantage. The duo combined for touchdown No. 3 just three minutes later on a 17-yard strike on the second play of its possession. Detroit blocked Hutson’s extra point attempt and Green Bay led 27-7.

The Packer defense, which intercepted six passes on the day, increased the lead to 34-7 with a 59-yard interception return for a score by Ted Fritsch. Hutson’s fourth touchdown reception of the quarter came just before the half on a six-yard pass from McKay.

"It was just an unbelievable quarter for Don Hutson and the Packers," Remmel said. "Hutson kicked two extra points in the second half, but didn’t play from scrimmage. His record of 31 points in a game stood as a Packer mark until Paul Hornung scored 33 against the Baltimore Colts in 1965."

The Packers’ 57-point total against Detroit remains the team record for most points in an NFL game.

After the game, Remmel interviewed Detroit head coach Gus Dorais under the stadium bleachers.

"I asked him to sum up the game and he gave it to me about as succinctly as you can," Remmel recalled. "He said ‘I’ll give it to you in three words: Too much Hutson.’ "

Dorais also said: "I never saw such an exhibition of touchdown passes in my life. That was the ball game. . . . He’s the same as he always was — incomparable. I wonder when he’s going to quit?"

Remmel also spoke with Green Bay head coach Curly Lambeau at the team hotel.

"There were no press conferences back then, so you caught the coaches wherever you could," he said. "And I caught Curly off the lobby of the Schroeder Hotel."

As quoted in Remmel’s report, Lambeau said: "Hutson hasn’t lost a thing. He probably could have broken the National Football League’s single-game scoring record (40 points by Ernie Nevers of the Duluth Eskimos in 1929, the NFL’s oldest-standing record) had he been left in the game. Remember, he did it all in a very few minutes."

And Hutson did it against a talented and veteran Detroit team seeking its seventh consecutive league victory.

Green Bay, the defending NFL champion, coaxed Hutson out of retirement to play in the 1945 season. With the victory over Detroit, the Packers were off to a 2-0 start, but would finish with a 6-4 record and in third-place in the Western Division. The Lions fashioned a 7-3 mark, behind NFL and division champion Cleveland.

In Richard Whittingham’s book, "What a Game They Played," Hutson was quoted in his typical modest fashion on the record-setting game:

"It all happened because of the wind. I remember vividly how it was blowing straight down the field, like maybe 30 or 35 miles an hour. It was all a matter of judging the ball in the air and we were much better at it that day than the Lions.

"With the wind with us, we’d throw these long passes and I was able to get down there under them. I think their defensive backs didn’t think the ball would travel as far as it did. And sometimes, when we were throwing into the wind, I’d have to circle back like I was going for a lazy fly ball just as I did when I played center field. There was never another game quite like that, at least one that I played in."

Sources contributing to this story: Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel archives, Brown County Library, and NFL Pro Football Hall of Fame archives.